featured blog posts

Representative John Boehner was reelected as Speaker of the House this week, surviving a challenge from the far right as the 114th U.S. Congress, with Republican leadership in both Houses, began its work.

Today, you are more important than we are. It's up to you to lead. Make the choice to serve. Endeavor to do something extraordinary. And when life throws setback and challenges your way, grit your teeth and keep on going.

Many people put a great amount of energy into their hobbies, people with deep resentments about things they cannot change displace their hostility into the channel they can find, and companies with a financial interest pour resources into the advancement whatever they profit from.

Roxanna Green never imagined a life in the public eye but when her 9-year-old daughter, Christina-Taylor, was killed on that fateful day in Tucson, Arizona, she became a voice for gun control. She recently returned from Washington, D. C., disappointed, disgusted but not surprised.

In 1981, Bernie Shaw stood up to his bosses and the opposition networks and kept Jim Brady alive. He was right, the rest of us were wrong and he saved our "unique" credibility. It's too bad there no was no Bernie Shaw at CNN or Fox yesterday.

I come from a long line of military vets and war heroes. I am no stranger to the concept of baring arms, fighting for freedom or protecting property. What is strange to me is the fact that people do not seem to respect fire arms or their purpose.

I want to direct the same lines said by Joseph Welch in 1954 to Wayne LaPierre, who testified at the Senate committee hearing on January 30, 2013 and shamelessly uses fear-mongering to boost gun sales: Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

If Americans had said no more after Columbine, there may never have been a Virginia Tech. If we had said no more after Aurora, there may never have been a Newtown, and maybe some of the more than 31,000 other American gun deaths that occur each year could have been prevented.

When future historians look back on the gun control wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, they will consider LaPierre, if they consider him at all, to be a right-wing nut whose influence was based on the misguided perception that he actually represented more than a small number of "gun rights" extremists.

Almost six years ago, I lost my girlfriend, Maxine Turner, in the worst school shooting in American history. Yesterday, she would have turned twenty-eight. Some have said she was "in the wrong place at the wrong time." But she wasn't. She was in a classroom -- the right place.

Given that I'm required to pass an exam to show I'm competent to drive my car, I feel I could and should be required to pass a similar competency test to own my guns. Unfortunately that level of regulation is not likely to happen any time soon.